Saturday, May 30, 2015

In the Dark Night of my Soul,With passion burning; oh, lucky me - I went away in secret and unseen, My being joyful and at ease In the darkness and invisible I climbed the secret ladder up; oh lucky me - In darkness, in disguise, My being joyful and at ease. The night of joy, In secret, unobserved, and shouldn't be; Without light or guidance But the one inside The midnight sun lead me, Sun brighter than at noonTo where He, I knew; I knew it well, Awaited me, and nobody else. The night lead me, More perfect than the dawnThe night of love: We merged, we mixed, one in anotherMy yearning breast, my breath Was only for Him and Him aloneHe slept, I touched Him, And the cedars with breeze us cuddled... His breath - my healing breeze, His pure golden hair, Sweet wounding touch, both gentle and exciting - And, senseless, I was lost, And consciousness dissolved, His cheek by mine,And all the world abandoned, I've lost my troubles there, I've tossed them into lilies...

M.N.

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Dark Night of The Soul - InterpretationMy (sudden) understanding was that this little, very simple and very complex at the same time, poem is the concept, symbol and the celebration of the organic unity of the Love earthly, human, sexual (in this particular case, and this is explicitly and deliberately clear from the text, the physical love of one, relatively young, with his intensity and abandon, man for another) and the Love spiritual, religious, heavenly, eternal, pure and just as intense: the love for and of God, in Christianity, for Christ. This poem affirms the notion of the deification of the Beloved by the Lover (in old, traditional and somewhat misleading terms) and the attempt at transformation in closeness and merger with the Beloved - the God. The love of ancient Hebrews for their God was just as intense, overwhelming and almost physical, single minded and exclusive in their devotion to their "one and only" Beloved-God, probably a defense and a substitute for the earthly and real Beloved(s). The love of deeply religious and spiritual Christians for their Beloved, Christ, has the same intense and mixed physical-heavenly quality. The physical, earthly, sexual component is the emotional font and engine which feeds and embodies the pure, spiritual, religious love. This poem discovers that there is no contradiction between them, that it is rather natural and organic continuum than artificial and cruel dichotomy. What is the better case, notion and the example for the wise acceptance of gay sexuality and lifestyles on the part of the Christian Churches, than this little poem, which breathes with life and truth still, half a millennium after it was created? Judaism, this practical and living sociology, so to speak, did accept them, quietly and without much hullabaloo. Furthermore, for anyone, trying to understand the origins of Christianity, it should be undeniable, that historically, spiritually, conceptually, philosophically, aesthetically, it is rooted in a preceding homoerotic (and much more than simply "homoerotic") cult of Antinous based on the undoubtedly real historical figure. This proto-Christian religion was appropriated, (perverted?), broadened and transformed by fusion with Judaism and aesthetically-spiritually framed by the Hellenistic mythologists ("myth-maker, myth-maker, make me a myth!"). For Alexandrian Jews, the compilers of Septuagint, and by extension, Early Christians, the idea of "gay God" was blasphemous and absolutely unacceptable, just like the idea of living Emperor-God. This idea is still treated in the same terms by many contemporary religious thinkers and figures. Christianity, in a way, was and remains the Judaeo-Hellenistic religion of "common sense" (inspired by "Common Aphrodite", as Socrates would have put it) and intense, "gut-reaction" protest against the homoerotic cults and "gay Gods" and by the nature of this relation is rooted in them. Mithraic cults is another example of the rejected early pre-Christian religious movements.The Greek mythologists, who had no problems with these issues in their Olympic Pantheon, readily obliged and produced their magnum opus, a new religious paradigm, better suited for their historical time and place, under the restrictive (Early Rabbinical Judaism) and fanatical influence of their Hebrew literary-religious brethren.The true Beloved is God, and the true God is The Beloved. Now it remains to determine what makes them "true", how to separate it from "untrue" and how to find this "truth". I think all of us, of all orientations and religious and non-religious persuasions are engaged in this life-long, mysterious and not always meaningful search. Keep searching, and do not talk about it with your psychiatrist: it will destroy everything. Place a smiley here. M.N.

“He soars on the wings of Divine love . . .”
“It is perhaps not an exaggeration to say that the verse and prose works combined of St. John of the Cross form at once the most grandiose and the most melodious spiritual canticle to which any one man has ever given utterance.
The most sublime of all the Spanish mystics, he soars aloft on the wings of Divine love to heights known to hardly any of them. . . . True to the character of his thought, his style is always forceful and energetic, even to a fault.
When we study his treatises–principally that great composite work known as the Ascent of Mount Carmel and the Dark Night–we have the impression of a mastermind that has scaled the heights of mystical science; and from their summit looks down upon and dominates the plain below and the paths leading upward. . . . Nowhere else, again, is he quite so appealingly human; for, though he is human even in his loftiest and sublimest passages, his intermingling of philosophy with mystical theology; makes him seem particularly so. These treatises are a wonderful illustration of the theological truth that graced far from destroying nature, ennobles and dignifies it, and of the agreement always found between the natural and the supernatural–between the principles of sound reason and the sublimest manifestations of Divine grace.”

Translated and edited,
by E. ALLISON PEERS
from the critical edition of
P. SILVERIO DE SANTA TERESA, C.D.

This is a classic poem, originally written in Spanish by Saint John of the Cross (the English translation is below but it is not as pretty). The dark night of the soul refers to a period of spiritual crisis, where the believer finds it difficult to believe. In the poem, the narrator resolves the crisis and finds himself at peace once more in the garden of his beliefs.

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